All Rise...

The Charge

The soul possessed.

The Case

After receiving a phantom Eucharist, young Ricky Banda (Nito Perez, Jr.)
begins having visions of the Virgin Mary. Ricky quickly becomes a local
celebrity, and catches the eye of Brother Neil (Kevin Rankin), a street preachy
who hosts a cable access show. Ricky's neighbors and relatives believe he has
been chosen as an instrument of God, but they soon realize that the entity
possessing Ricky draws it power from the forces of darkness.

It would take certain skills to pull off a story such as this, but Benny
Matthews obviously doesn't possess those skills. Matthews, who wrote, directed,
edited and produced this movie, earns points for trying, but that's as far as I
can extend the accolades. Santeria is strictly amateur hour at ever
level. Matthews's plotting is nothing new, and his dialogue is excruciatingly
banal. His shot compositions exhibit no visual acumen. Aside from the
aforementioned Kevin Rankin (you might remember him from Hulk, or from his hilarious turn as Lucien
the R.A. in Undeclared), the cast is comprised of Matthews's friends,
relatives, and neighbors. Most of these people have no acting experience
whatsoever, and it shows. Many of them appear to be reading from cue cards, and
several of them appear to have just come out of a collective coma. To make
matters worse, the movie has been cut down from its original running time of 165
minutes, resulting in some decidedly choppy storytelling. Characters vanish
without a trace, while others change motivations without any rhyme or reason.
Numerous plot threads are left dangling. And with the exception of the last ten
minutes or so, much of the movie consists of static scenes during which the
characters indulge in dime store theology. To make matters worse, Matthews opens
the movie with narration that spells out the entire plot. He claims to have done
this in order to clear up any potential confusion during the climax, but all he
ends up doing is shooting himself in the foot. Why sit through the remaining
eighty minutes when the first two completely spell out what's ahead? Besides,
the climax isn't confusing; it's simply nonsensical. Get this—the entity
attacking Ricky and his family actually knocks on the family home's front door,
runs and hides, and then waits for someone to open the door before it enters the
house (a move which allows Matthews to become the billionth director to swipe
one of Sam Raimi's signature Evil Dead
shots). I had always assumed evil spirits weren't bound by the laws of physics,
but it looks like I was wrong. (Given its penchant for practical jokes, I was
hoping the evil entity would also put a burning bag of dog poop on the house's
front stoop, but my hopes were dashed.)

The transfer for Santeria is plagued with the same problems normally
found on a no-budget, shot-on-video, straight-to-DVD release. Backgrounds are
noisy, definition is poor, and jagged edges abound. Darker scenes are murky,
colors bleed, and compression artifacts pop up on several occasions. The audio
fares better; dialogue is always clear and intelligible, and the music is well
represented. The low end is a bit weak, though, and surround action is
non-existent. Extras consist of a few deleted scenes, a trailer for the movie,
previews for other Lionsgate horror flicks, and a commentary from Benny Matthews
and sound designer Will Golden. There's a bit of dead air in the commentary, but
there's also some good info regarding the struggles of working on a shoestring.
(This is yet another case in which the making of the movie turns out to be a lot
more interesting than the movie itself.)

One last thing: The party responsible for the movie's subtitles should be
shot. About half of the dialogue is in Spanish, and misspellings in the
translations run rampant. "Our" is used for "hour," and the
spelling of any given character's name often changes from line to line. And
while it's been quite some time since I last checked, I'm pretty sure
"siting" (which is used twice during the opening titles) isn't even a
word.

It's possible someone could take the core idea of this movie and weave an
interesting story around it. The effects of such phenomena on a close-knit,
relatively insular, devoutly religious community could provide a talented
filmmaker with the raw material for a compelling film, but Benny Matthews
certainly isn't that filmmaker. When all is said and done, Santeria is
nothing more than a glorified home movie, and a rather poor one at that.